1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to ecological environment monitoring technology, and more particularly, to a multi-checkpoint type clustered animal counting device which is designed for installation at a region full of animals, such as a farmland or garden full of pests (such as fruit flies), for providing a counting function that can be used for statistically determining the number of pests within that region.
2. Description of Related Art
In agricultural research and management, it is an important task to monitor the ecological environment of a farmland used to cultivate crops such as fruits, rice, and vegetables. The main purpose is to collect a set of ecological data that are considered as vital factors that would significantly affect the cultivation and growth of crops on the farmland. These ecological data include, for example, number of clustered pests per unit area, temperature, humidity, sunlight amount, wind speed, to name a few. Research personnel can then analyze these ecological data for management of the farmland to achieve optimized crop production.
Traditionally, the collection of ecological data from farmlands is carried out by human labor work. For example, the number of pests per unit area is collected by firstly using a net to capture a group of pests within a certain area, and then visually counting the total number of pests being captured in the net, and finally using statistical methods to estimate the total number of pests within the entire area. For collection of climate-related ecological data (temperature, humidity, sunlight amount, wind speed, etc.), this task is traditionally carried out by installing temperature sensors, humidity sensors, sunlight amount sensors, wind speed sensors on the farmland; and the sensed data are visually inspected and manually recorded by the research/management personnel. The collected ecological data are then analyzed and compiled by the research personnel into written reports. These written reports are then used as references for management of the farmland to achieve optimized crop production.
One apparent drawback to the labor-based work for ecological data collection is that it is quite tedious, laborious, and time-consuming for the research/management personnel to carry out. Moreover, if the farmland is located at a remote site, such as a distant mountain or rural place, the research/management personnel might have to spend lots of time and cost in the travel to the farmland.
Moreover, since the estimation of the number of pests within the farmland is carried out by manually capturing the pests and visually counting their total number, it would be not only tedious, laborious, and time-consuming for the research/management personnel to carry out, but would cause the result to be highly inaccurate. One solution to this problem is to use an infrared-interrupt type of object sensor which is installed within a bottle that can lure the pests into crawl such that when a pest passes the object sensor, an infrared beam will be interrupted, thereby triggering a counter to increase its count.
One drawback to the above-mentioned pest-counting operation, however, is that only one sensor is used for detecting the presence of the pest, which would easily cause erroneous result. For instance, if a pest retreats backwards after it has passed the sensor, the sensor will be triggered again, resulting in a count of 2, but actually there is only one pest. Moreover, since most pests (such as fruit flies) have wings, if a winged pest lingers at the sensor for a long time and repeatedly flaps its wings, then the repeated wing flapping of the pest would cause the sensor to be repeatedly triggered again and again, resulting in an erroneous count.